Negotiations during State conflicts

When two men are in disagreement the disagreement does not last for years with escalating costs. Small groups may carry out conflicts for years at personal costs, like the Hatfield and McCoy family feud.Two combatants will often show one side winning and the other side running away. When one looses and walks away, the victor does not usually continue the attack and ask for unconditional surrender.

Conflicts between States usually are settled differently when one side is winning. After victory is achieved the victorious State will not cease fighting, but will continue fighting. Why the difference in the actions of a State that is winning a conflict and an individual that is winning a conflict?

During WW II Allen Dulles was stationed in Switzerland with the OSS (which preceded the CIA) and was assigned the primary duty of seeing if there was a resistance movement in Germany which might overthrow Hitler. Dulles learned of a very substantial plot to kill Hitler early in the war in 1942 after Germany’s defeat at Stalingrad. While Stalin had murdered 35,000 to 50,000 of his senior military officers prior to the war in order to put in his loyal officers, Hitler had resisted this strategy and did not purge the regular German army of its senior officers. Early in the war a large number of these senior officers, including his Chief of Staff, General Ludwig Beck, built up a strong resistance movement with the purpose of assassinating Hitler and then surrendering to the American and British forces. This was in 1942! Three years before the killing in Europe stopped. When Roosevelt first learned of this significant resistance movement and the plan of the Germans to surrender immediately to America and the British, he unilaterally announced the unconditional surrender policy which caused much of the resistance movement to dissolve and their plans to be abandoned.

In World War II the United States was victorious long before Japan surrendered, unconditionally. Why did the United States not cease the hostilities earlier? The U. S. could have negotiated a cease fire much earlier. The U. S. had killed ten times as many Japanese as Americans were killed at Pearl Harbor. By continuing the conflict thousands more Americans were killed at Okinawa and Iwo Jima. Millions of Japanese were killed.

Could not the terms of the cease fire stipulate that Japan will withdraw all her troops from China, Korea, and other places, and pay for the damages that occurred at Pearl Harbor? These kinds of agreements are settled between individuals and private organizations.

I think the reasons States don't reach an agreement when one side is winning are egos of the old men in air-conditioned offices that do not have to fight and die. War is the health of the State. President Roosevelt and President Truman probably thought they would show the Japanese and the rest of the world what great warriors they were, even though they were not fighting in the miserable South Pacific jungles. It was not their costs, but their gains. It was at the cost to taxpayers, and the unnecessary loss of lives, on both sides.

"War is the health of the State". Randolph Bourne